Dramatic images of workers shackled at the ankles, wrists and waist during a raid by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week will have a chilling effect on foreign companies with operations, or plans to invest, in America. The detention of 475 workers, mostly South Korean nationals, at a battery plant being built by Hyundai and LG in Georgia, which involved helicopters, armoured vehicles and heavily armed agents, was clearly choreographed to send a message to Donald Trump’s base, and to shock international businesses into respecting US visa rules. Instead, the optics could backfire on the president’s plans to reinvigorate America’s manufacturing sector.

The alleged infringements at the Hyundai and LG site are yet to be clarified. Immigration lawyers say many of the arrests were of individuals who entered the US on B-1 visas, which allow entry to the US for business purposes but do not allow the holder to work for payment, as well as the Esta visa waiver system that facilitates short-term business visits for specific activities. Seoul-based executives and industrial groups told the Financial Times that given difficulties in gaining short-term worker visas, it was an “open secret” that South Korean companies and their subcontractors had routinely used other forms of visas for workers sent to build advanced manufacturing sites in the US.

It is only right that foreign companies abide by US visa rules, and that America enforces them. But even if ICE was targeting genuine illegal work in Georgia last week, the manner in which it did so will do more harm than good to Trump’s hopes of sparking a manufacturing boom.